The Crooked Dais Freehold
The Crooked Dais is, more so than many freeholds, a place as well as a community. Rather than committing to a single building, the freehold is pieced together with bits of other buildings, all tied together with a system of contracts not widely known among the Lost. Enter a basement, cross the right threshold, and the next thing you know you're in an attic across town. The links between rooms are constantly shifting as more buildings are tied into the system, which can make it a bit of a nightmare to navigate. There's usually a haphazard system of signs to guide people through the labyrinth, but wandering it isn't an exercise for the faint of heart--there's always the chance of stumbling upon a Hunterheart in the middle of a 'meal,' or a pair of Summer court Ogres having a sparring match that involves hurling each other across the room. The freehold is the place for all changeling activities that must take place out of mortal eyes, and most long-time members revel in the chance. Most of the rooms are self-contained, and entrances to the freehold are few and well-hidden, lest an unsuspecting mortal stumble in. This network of rooms serves as many things: a headquarters for the freehold's leadership, a place to hold festivals and other 'public' gatherings, a social gathering area for the town's changeling population, and a place for the newly-escaped to take refuge while they decide what to do with their new lives. Additionally, there are several small workshops for crafting goods that are best kept out of mortal eyes, such as weapons and armor. The four courts and several entitlements all have their headquarters in corners of this system. While most of the court headquarters' locations are public knowledge, several entitlements and the Winter court only reveal their locations to their members. The entrances to the freehold are well-known to its members. All buildings with an entrance to the system are marked with a prominently-displayed sign on their exterior which proclaims that they are protected by the fictional Trenchant Security Company. The most commonly used of the entrances is an uptown bar called the Iron Wand, located just across the street from the park for easy access to the hedge. Its proprietor, a Brewer by the name of Quiet Tom, takes a great deal of care to make sure that the bar maintains a creepy enough reputation to scare off most mortals. As a result, the bar is one of the few gathering places for the town's changelings outside of the freehold. Entering the freehold proper is as easy as walking down a flight of stairs in the bar's back room--though this, of course, must be done only when the bar is free of mortals, lest the more inquisitive ones start wondering why people walk back there and disappear. The room beyond these stairs is usually constant, a small, branching hallway that serves as a hub for the freehold. In the center of this hallway, there's a large bulletin board, plastered with layer upon layer of fliers and leaflets of interest to the fae populace. The 'throne room,' where the court leaders usually conduct their public business, is in a small warehouse on the outskirts of the town, with only a few paths through the freehold leading to it. It's typically well-decorated with the regalia of the ruling court. This large space also serves as the site of most of the community-wide events, such as the Winter Formal. The Crooked Dais - History The first freehold in the Spring's End area was a small one going by the name of The Refuge. With only a few out-of-the-way trods in the area, abductions were rare, and people coming back from those abductions, even rarer. With only a dozen or so members at any given time, courts in the freehold were very loose and informal. Altogether, it was a calm, unchanging community with little use for the political intrigues and constant vigilance of larger freeholds. The amphitheater in the town's park had always been considered spooky--a few urban myths told of people involved in plays there suddenly disappearing between acts, or sightings of ghosts in the middle of the night. When one corner of the stage sank into the ground one night, the resulting narrow gap on the other side became a new trod--a big one, with relatively safe pathways leading deep into the hedge. Early attempts to close the gateway all proved ineffective--a city attempt to right the stage ended when construction equipment was repeatedly sabotaged overnight, and more amateur attempts to fill the hole in always quickly come undone, the dirt vanishing even as people watched. Rumors quickly began spreading among the changeling community: The trod was stuck open because They opened it on purpose in order to kidnap the entire town under the cover of darkness, or people swore that they'd seen hobgoblins roaming the park at night, almost as if the area were becoming an annex of the hedge... The trickle of changelings to the town soon became a torrent. Not only did recent escapees end up more likely to emerge there, but more adventurous out-of-towner changelings flocked in as the courts all dashed to react to this new corridor into the hedge. The informal, fledgling courts of the budding freehold became strong, rigid societies almost overnight, and inter-court bickering quickly spread. Summer saw the trod as a potential vector of attack, Autumn viewed it as a means of exploring the hedge, Winter wanted to do everything possible to keep the trod from drawing the attention of the True Fae, and Spring had a weak, ineffectual leader and ended up bouncing between the three sides. Before long each court had its own base of operations within the city, and a changeling cold war had begun. Summer and Autumn were generally allied, both agreeing that the trod was something should be exploited; Winter strongly opposed them, believing that any such activity would draw the eyes of the Fair Folk, and Spring flip-flopped between camps for months before it sided with Autumn and Summer, on the grounds that any others who had been taken shouldn't be denied this means of egress. While the factional fighting was more political than anything--a few scuffles occurred at times, but never with the sanction of the court leaders--it ironically drew the eyes of all of the courts away from the trod itself. When a host of Gentry and privateers emerged through the arch, they not only took the changeling community entirely by surprise, but the courts had become so insulated that the factions were often ignorant of the danger until they were personally hit. The attackers carried off dozens of changelings with them and left several more dead in their wake, only leaving when the Gentry among the attackers started becoming strained from spending too long on Earth. With the court leadership in chaos and the possibility of another attack around the corner, the survivors reluctantly put aside their differences and rallied to defense, managing to marginally push back another incursion the next day. And again the next. And on the third day, the attacks stopped. Whether the forces opposing them were worn down or just gave up was never apparent, but once it was obvious they were gone, the survivors made the most of the reprieve. The first order of business was arranging for sentries to always be near the trod; with that basic measure in place, a new freehold, built on the figurative ashes of the old one--and taking its new name from the source of The Refuge's demise as a reminder--was formed. The new freehold was built on a single founding principle: All members' first allegiance was to the changeling community itself, and only secondarily to their courts. With all factions now agreeing that the trod was a sizable threat, they were able to coordinate, slowly hammering out the details of how this menace should be handled in a manner that satisfied all parties. That was almost a decade ago. The sense of cooperation that the Crooked Dais was founded has worn down over years of comparative ease, and court infighting is no longer exactly unheard of. Still, for the most part, the four have gotten along, with each court specializing in one or two duties to the freehold and the transitions between seasons happening painlessly. Of course, such a high concentration of changelings in one area has its own problems. The surrounding hedge has more than its share of the mad, privateers, loyalists, and other escaped changelings that haven't rejoined society for one reason or another, to the point that the freehold has recently advised that its members are to avoid the hedge if possible. Abductions within the city never completely stopped, with the occasional outsider sneaking in from an outlying minor trod; in recent times, the rate of these has picked up. Actually, the rate of a lot of things has picked up--new changelings arriving, hints that the True Fae are once again turning their eyes to the city, abductions. Changelings have been shot in the back by strange weapons while wandering the streets. Some disappear. Even stranger things have been happening to some of the city's mortals. It's enough bad stuff that the courts are beginning to prepare for the worst. While there's nothing concrete to worry about yet, there's plenty of work to be done as the freehold scrambles to find any hint of the coming trouble and patch up what problems have already risen. Category:O Frabjous Day